Day 191 (Isaiah 5-8) - Year 8

**Tara-Leigh Cobble** (0:01)
Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara-Leigh Cobble and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.
Today we drop back in on Isaiah the Major Prophet, who opens with a love poem to the people of Israel and Judah. In the poem, God is compared to a vine keeper, and the Israelites are compared to wild grapes. But in the Hebrew, the term is actually more like stinking things. Not so flattering, and not exactly what God wants to grow in his garden. So God removes the protective hedge around the vineyard, and the wild grapes are trampled. Then Isaiah goes on to highlight six ways wild grapes are stinky, and pronounces woe over them. First, he denounces the greedy landowners who push the poor out of the land. God had established land allotment rules back in Numbers Chapters 26 and 33 So Isaiah says, their houses will become desolate. Second, he speaks woe over those whose lavish lives of excess and drunkenness lead them away from honoring God. Instead of being filled, they'll be famished. And instead of eating, they'll be swallowed by the grave. The remaining woes are strung together closely. Woe number three is spoken to people who mock God and doubt His judgment is coming. They seek out sin. Woe number four is to the prideful fool with no discernment or integrity distorting the truth. Woe number five is for the arrogant. And the final woe, woe number six, doubles down on the drunkenness mentioned in woe number two and adds to it the fact that they also rob people of justice. Verse 24 tells us that these people have despised the word of God. So God promised us to send the nations as judgment on them. Do you remember how God used Israel to drive out the wicked nations of Canaan when they first entered the promised land? And now he's using those nations to drive Israel out of the same land because they've broken their covenant with him.
Then we move on to Isaiah 6, which is a stunning chapter. It's the prophet's vision of God's throne room. I cannot imagine what it was like for him to have this vision. Put yourself in Isaiah's shoes for a minute. Everything is going terribly with God's people. And sometimes, like in 2 9, you don't even want him to forgive them for how terrible they're acting. It's a very natural response, right? But if Isaiah is going to be God's mouthpiece, it's important for him not only to have a proper view of God, but of himself in light of God. Yes, the Israelites have been acting wickedly, but Isaiah is a sinner in need of God's mercy too. And this vision is God's way of reminding him of that. He sees the outer fringes of God's glory. He sees the six-winged seraphim covering their eyes as they cry out, holy, holy, holy. Repeating this three times is a way of magnifying it exponentially. Then there's an earthquake. Then there's smoke, and one of the seraphs puts a hot coal in his mouth, and it burns away all that is impure.
When confronted with God's holiness, Isaiah rightly sees his own impurity. He's humbled. This was a necessary posture for Isaiah.
God commissions him for the task at hand. Strangely, the task is to make sure the people don't repent. This reminds me of when God called Moses to go meet with Pharaoh and then said, Here's exactly what to say and what to do when you get there, and by the way, he's not going to listen.
God tells Isaiah to rebuke a people who are not going to listen, which only heaps more judgment on them. Isaiah is perplexed by this, as I'm sure most of us would be. God tells him that despite all the judgment and destruction, there will be a remnant of his people. He will preserve this family that he has set his heart on from the beginning, this batch of stinking fruit, while killing off all the wickedness that has set itself up against him.
In chapter seven, the southern kingdom of Judah is in some potential military trouble. Is this God's judgment? What's going on? The people of Israel whose kingdom was toppled by the Assyrians have partnered with Syria to take Judah's capital, Jerusalem.
Judah's king Ahaz is nervous and is probably tempted to make some foreign alliances at this point just to protect himself. But Isaiah gives instructions to trust God because God promises to deliver them. Then God speaks to King Ahaz and tells him to ask him for a sign. Ahaz made a foreign alliance once before back in 2 Kings 16 So God is giving him an opportunity to grow in faith. But Ahaz refuses. This may seem like a humble, trusting response, but it was actually defiant. So God says, I'm giving you a sign anyway. Then God gives a sign that you probably recognize as the birth announcement for Jesus. But Ahaz doesn't know about Jesus, so we have to put ourselves in his shoes to see how he would have received this sign. What would he have thought of this? At the moment, he's worried about being attacked by invading armies. And God's words here sound a bit like a timeline, don't they? How long would it take a woman to get pregnant and deliver a child who would then be old enough to tell right from wrong?